Emily Samuel

Thank you for having me.

Now it's time to unpack that conversation with my daughters, Sophie and Emily.

They are both psychotherapists and I'm keen to hear their perspectives.

Hello, Emily and Sophie.

So this is following my very powerful conversation with Jess Mills, following the death of her mum and the birth of a baby and...

All of it.

Thank you.

Now it's time to unpack that conversation with my daughters, Sophie and Emily.

They are both psychotherapists, and I'm keen to hear their perspectives.

Hello, Sophie and Emily.

We are going to talk about ore duber, and I'd love to know your thoughts.

I mean, I think that it was such a fascinating conversation and he has such bravery and openness.

If this conversation resonated with you, please do follow Therapy Works wherever you get your podcasts.

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And I think this is where that sort of DBT idea, the dialectical behavioral therapy c- comes in, where you can sort of say, like, "I can understand that this is my truth and this is valid for me, and I also understand that is not what you see, and that is just where we are right now." And, and I think that's probably all you can do at this point, and things sometimes do change over time.

I think Emily's given such a beautiful, comprehensive answer.

I'm not sure we have anything to add.

No.

And I understand why people will want that 'cause then, for example, in your s- question, it's very painful not to be seen and to be misunderstood, and so you don't want that to be painful.

You want that to be met.

But I think if there is the emotional tolerance to say, "Now I'm adult, I actually don't need every member of my family of origin to meet me completely," then, then there's space for different stories to coexist and maybe, as Emily said, in time, space for stories to change.

Because also I think something can happen that when we push, push, push, uh, and then you get resistance, resistance, resistance, pushback, pushback, pushback, that's when you get rupture.

Thank you.

[outro music] Now it's time to unpack that conversation with my daughters, Sophie and Emily.

They are both psychotherapists, and I'm keen to hear their perspectives.

[outro music] Hello, Sophie and Emily.

This is us talking about the brilliant, uh, novelist and campaigner and activist and feminist, Elif Shafak.

What I really loved about the interview was how beautifully Elif talks about the power of stories, that, that they are... what, what they offer and how kind of lifesaving they, they can be.

If this conversation resonated with you, please do follow Therapy Works wherever you get your podcasts.

It really helps other people find the show, and you'll never miss an episode.

So let's hear this week's question.

[upbeat music] Hello, my Agony Aunties, Sophie and Emily.

So I think this is a question that many people can resonate with, and I've shortened it, um, but I think I've got the-- I really have got the key points in.

I'm struggling with my elderly father.

Yes.

I, I, I think it's about boundaries, isn't it? Um, 'cause when you love someone, the feeling that you have is that you really want to make it better and fix them and sort his house out and have it tidy.

But actually, in a way that, Emily, you said, having a boundary where you recognize your father's limits and what is likely to change and what h- you can influence and the endpoint of where that is for you so that you don't keep trying to be the good daughter and hitting a brick wall.

So in some ways, the-- I think one piece of the work for you is to recognize his limits and therefore limit what you attempt to do so that you can free yourself from this constant waking up with circulating worry because you don't have power and control.

And because grief isn't something that simply happens in our thoughts, but something we experience bodily and relationally too, it inevitably enters our creativity.

One of the things I found particularly interesting in Grief, the Body, and the Spirit: Healing Across Generations with Julia Samuel and her daughters, Sophie and Emily Samuel, was the conversation around grief and trust.

They talked about examples where clients needed to test the therapeutic relationship, sometimes repeatedly, before they could trust that it was safe enough to reveal something difficult or stay with something painful.

And that immediately made me think about artists, because artists often don't get much opportunity to test relationships before they're expected to do something incredibly vulnerable within them.